The new single-player campaign is called Imperator Augustus

Sep 2, 2014 08:54 GMT  ·  By

The development team at The Creative Assembly and publisher SEGA have announced that they are working on a new Emperor Edition version of Total War: Rome II and that the entire package is designed to show how important player feedback has been to the studio.

The new version of the strategy title will be offered for free to all those who have bought the original one and will include all the free extra content that has been offered since launch, which includes significant changes to core mechanics, a new faction, more units and other tweaks, according to the official forums.

Total War: Rome II – Emperor Edition will also include a new Imperator Augustus single-player campaign, which will allow gamers to experience the aftermath of the death of Julius Caesar, which was marked by civil war and interesting strategic possibilities for the neighbors of the empire.

Mike Simpson, the creative director of the team, states, “Rome II was far and away our most ambitious game. We see more people playing, and playing for longer, than any other game in the Total War series. However, we take our players’ feedback very seriously. Through the multitude of improvements and free content updates we’ve brought to Rome II since its launch, we’ve worked hard to try and meet their expectations.”

When the new Total War title was launched, plenty of fans of the series complained about its less than stellar Artificial Intelligence and about other problems with the tactical battles and the campaign.

The Creative Assembly has since deployed 14 full patches for the title even as it was delivering a stream of downloadable content, and the studio is continuing to listen to feedback from fans in order to get hints about what should be changed next.

Jack Lusted, a former modder who is now working at the studio , says that the new Imperator Augustus campaign is designed to allow players to see some of the improvements added in Emperor Edition, including better politics and reworked role-playing mechanics.

He adds, “You can tackle the campaign as various Roman and non-Roman factions, including Armenia for the first time. Our aim was to represent the titanic power struggle that led to Octavian becoming the first Emperor of Rome. It’s a pretty epic campaign, and it’s great that we can offer this to existing ROME II players for free as a thanks for their support.”

Total War: Rome II – Emperor Edition does not yet have an official launch date.